


The Friendship Algorithm

by Crunchysunrises



Series: 5A: The Commorancy Saga [2]
Category: Naruto, Naruto/The Big Bang Theory, The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Community: cottoncandy_bingo, Community: fic_promptly, Community: trope_bingo, Community: wishlist_fic, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 11:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1508729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crunchysunrises/pseuds/Crunchysunrises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penny has a summer of fun and friendship with Leslie Winkle and the denizens of the fifth floor while the boys are off measuring magnetic thingys at the North Pole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Friendship Algorithm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TaikoHawk](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=TaikoHawk).



>   **Title:** The Friendship Algorithm  
>  **Fandom:** Naruto/The Big Bang Theory  
>  **Rating:** G  
>  **Content Notes:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no rights to or within the Naruto or The Big Bang Theory franchises, copyrights, characters or trademarks. This is for fun, not profit.  
>  **Summary:** Penny has a summer of fun and friendship with Leslie Winkle and the denizens of the fifth floor while the boys are off measuring magnetic thingys at the North Pole.  
>  **Additional Notes:** Written to fill a Wishlist 2012 request from TaikoHawk for more of that "The Big Bang Theory Naruto crossover you did, New (Ninja-ly) Neighbors? I enjoy the concept of Sheldon dealing with potentially equally unbalanced ninja. Maybe some sort of fiasco when Leonard asks Ino and Sakura to join the gang for paintball... and all hell breaks loose." I didn't get the paintball in but I did write more. This fic also fills the "au: college/high school" square for trope bingo 2014, the "lazy day" square on my cotton candy bingo card, and the "Author's choice, author's choice, depart" prompt on fic_promptly.

There seem to be six or possibly eight or ten people living in the upstairs apartments but, aside from the occasional shouting match, Penny would never know it. She only ever hears (or runs into) the blond guy from upstairs, who shouts in the halls and tromps up and down the stairs like maybe he really was raised in a barn. Everyone else from the fifth floor moves in silence. Penny never hears them walking past her door or the door to 4A, let alone talking in front of them. Come to that, Penny almost never catches them in the halls or on the stairs, either.

The freakish silence emanating from 5A and 5B creeps Penny out, something which she expounds on at length to the guys. Leonard, Raj, and Howard ignore her. Sheldon, who is more than a bit freakish himself, glories in the fifth floor’s silence.

To Penny’s (secret) annoyance, the other three practically trip over their own feet to help the new hot girls upstairs. They tromp up and down the stairs on the pretext of offering to carry boxes, set up the girls’ electronics, and wait for mail to steal and return, trying to do for the new girls all of the little things that Penny had asked of them when she had first moved into the building.

To Penny’s (secret) delight, the new girls pretend not to notice the guys’ desperate attempts to get their attention. The pink-haired one does most of the box carrying, a black-haired guy with a pissy expression (who maybe lives in one of the fifth floor apartments) has their electronics well in hand, and they never get any mail. Every attempt by the boys to get closer to the hot girls upstairs falls flat.

And Penny _loves_ it.

It’s not very nice of Penny, but there it is.

Then again, Penny has not been working at this being nice thing for very long. She can probably be forgiven backsliding a bit.

When she walks in on the guys fighting a Wii death match over who gets the blonde one, Penny changes her mind. The guys deserve everything that they get and then some.

“She’s mine!” Leonard cheers, pumping his fists into the air, while Wolowicz frantically pounds on his controller’s buttons.

“Get up! Get up! Get up!” Wolowicz orders his white, bobble-headed player, who lies crumpled at the feet of another bobble-headed player. The second player character is jumping and pumping its fists in the air. Penny does not envy the loser his view.

“Dude, can’t you be a good winner for – eeuk!” That last bit is a high pitched squeak because Raj has just noticed Penny standing in the doorway.

Penny takes her share of the Chinese from Sheldon and leaves, ignoring Leonard’s guilty whine.

 

 

 

Penny has the completely irrational suspicion that, even though none the boys in 4A have paid attention to her complaints about the new upstairs neighbors, the denizens of the fifth floor had not only listened to her criticisms but also taken them to heart.

She suddenly starts hearing more footfalls and unfamiliar voices in front of her apartment door (but only in front of her apartment. She rarely hears them when she is in 4A with the boys.)

The pissy-faced guy shows up one morning when Penny is feeling hung over and sadistic to ask to borrow a cup of sugar.

(The joke is on him. Penny doesn’t bake but she knows that Sheldon does. Under her evil eye, he goes across the hall, knock on 4A, and ask Dr. Sheldon Cooper for sugar. The guy from upstairs endures a forty minute lecture on personal responsibility, preparedness, and the precise allocations of resources that goes on in the Cooper-Hofsteader apartment before being turned down flat. The would-be sugar-borrower looks utterly murderous when he finally storms upstairs again. Glorying in her victory, Penny saunters across the hall to help herself to some of Sheldon’s precisely allocated coffee and milk.)

And Penny suddenly can’t go to work without running into the white-haired guy with the eye patch and scarf fixation in the hallways, never mind that it’s eighty-five degrees outside and he is suspiciously good at knowing what’s happening on his left side for a guy who is supposedly missing his left eye.

(The person who told the nerds of the world that it gets girls hot to be put-down by a jerk in an eye patch will forever be on Penny’s shit-list. And the first time the fake pirate negatively compliments her, Penny is going to pop him in the eye with his fake eye patch.)

It’s like being trapped in an episode of Friends with the world’s weirdest neighbors. Worst of all, that appellation applies just as well to her actual friends as to the people upstairs and isn’t _that_ a depressing thought.

Thinking that they’re doing all of this for her benefit is weird and self-important but Penny still feels vindicated when she walks in on the hot blonde and a guy with spikey, black hair making a huge production out of checking the fifth floor apartments’ mailboxes. To Penny, it’s practically proof that she was totally right about the fifth floor neighbors.

“Hi!” says the blonde. She smiles a wide, cheerful smile.

Penny has one just like it. She trots it out, shows it off, and says, “Hey, long time, no see.”

She tries very hard not to think about the last time that she had met the blonde in the lobby.

“Well, you know how it is,” chirps the blonde. “We’ve been busy, busy, busy!”

The guy standing next to her sighs, rolls his eyes, and puts his hands behind his head, his elbows jutting out the either side of him. The blonde rewards him with an elbow to the gut that leaves him doubled over and gasping. She takes the opportunity to shove a wad of folded coupons and grocery store ads into his limp hands.

“I don’t think we really introduced ourselves last time,” the blonde continues, her tone bright and friendly. “I’m Ino Yamanaka and this is Shikamaru Nara.”

“It’s nice to meet you, again,” Penny replies by habit.

Not thinking about their last lobby meeting means that it is the only thing that Penny can think about. Well, that and how much it would have hurt if Ino’s stiletto had hit her in the face, rather than stabbing itself into the wall.

“I’m Penny.”

It’s a reflex by now not to give too much information away. You never know when you might want to pick up, leave, and start over somewhere else without your ex-boyfriend, ex-friend, or ex-pizza guy knowing how to find you.

She glances down at Ino’s feet and adds, “Stilettos again, I see.”

They’re plum-colored and really cute, but, truth be told, Penny’s love of shoes has waned a bit since Ino nearly killed her with one.

“I did not!” Ino says sharply, as if reading Penny’s mind. “If I was trying to kill you, you’d already be dead!”

Penny’s line of sight slips past Ino and Shikamaru to the tiny hole in the wall where the stiletto had lodged itself. Management had not yet gotten around to repairing it. Of course, considering the fact that the elevator had been broken since before she moved into the building, Penny has little hope of that little, terrifying reminder disappearing any time soon.

“That’s comforting,” Penny says, not meaning it at all. “Excuse me. I don’t want to be here.”

Penny has never been much of a liar (and only Sheldon ever believes her anyway) because, in Penny’s experience, nothing twists so deeply or painfully as the truth.

She turns and heads up the stairs as the guy murmurs something in another language to Ino. Penny wonders if Ino ever throws her footwear at him and then decides that she would rather not know.

 

 

 

Penny’s new-found distrust of hot shoes actually saves her quite a bit of money. She is juggling her grocery bags, mentally calculating how much she’s saving by not shoe shopping, and trying to open the apartment building’s front door with her elbow, when someone comes up behind her and says in heavily accented English, “I help you.”

Penny expects him to get the door for her. Instead, the guy moves up beside her, takes her groceries out of her arms, and cradles them against his broad chest with one arm. He easily opens the door for her with his free hand.

“Thanks,” says Penny, turning to look at her rescuer and then craning her neck to look further up.

He is a _big_ guy and somewhat overweight, with broad shoulders, strong arms, and long, wild auburn hair. There is a red swirl tattooed on both of his cheeks, a drunk-decision if Penny ever saw one.

It’s not like Penny can throw stones. She has the Chinese symbol for ‘courage’ tattooed on her butt. (Although, if Sheldon is to be believed, she might have gotten the Chinese symbol for ‘soup’ instead but even if Sheldon is right, Penny is sticking to the courage interpretation, thanks.)

“Thanks,” Penny chirps, feeling off kilter as she slips past him and into the building. Smiling up at him, she adds, “I’m Penny. I live in 4B.”

“I am Choji,” he replies, shifts her groceries to his left arm, and holds out his right hand.

Penny shakes his large, warm hand and says, “It’s nice to meet you, Choji.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Pink crawling up his neck and flushing his cheeks, he adds, “I am glad too.”

Penny’s smile widens a fraction because a blushing guy is just so cute.

“So are you new to the building? Staying with someone?”

“Yes,” he replies, following her into the building. “I am on the five floor.”

Oh. Well, that’s disappointing. Penny is considering whether or not she can get her groceries back from him or if the groceries are a lost cause, when he says questioningly, “Mail?”

“Excuse me?”

Nodding toward the bank of mailboxes, he asks, “Mail? Do you want it?”

“Oh! Yes, I’d love to check my mail,” Penny hurries to say, feeling awkward. The language difficulties are no one’s fault but they leave her feeling like a bit of an idiot. “If you don’t mind?”

“I do not mind,” he says, flashing a wide grin. Lightly hefting her bags, he adds, “It is light.”

Choji waits for Penny to get her mail, follows her to the stairs, and then politely allows her to go first. Penny can see his point, the stairwell is narrow enough that she would have to be willing to snuggle under his arm to walk up the stairs side-by-side with him, but her stomach still clenches before she lays her foot on the first step.

Choji says nothing about how jams and jellies jiggle, makes no weird space jokes about her ass, and doesn’t even try to not so subtly grope her. When Penny dares to glance over her shoulder at him, Choji appears to have his eyes firmly fixed on her calves.

It’s surprising and weird.

It’s also really depressing that she’s weirded out and surprised by a guy trying to treat her right.

Choji carries Penny’s things up four winding flights of stairs and valiantly chats with her while she fumbles for her keys. He never loses his breath and Penny never catches him staring at her breasts or butt. It’s nice, more than nice, really. If Choji’s roommates were less weird than Howard’s latest pick-up routine, Penny would want to hang out with him again.

(And she would want to introduce him to her neighbors as the kind of mostly average guy who probably pulls dates, because, despite what the guys think, it’s not their smartness, average looks, or nerdiness that drives girls away. It’s their creepy, sexist behavior, neediness, and the rude crap that they say that wards women, and more specifically her, off.)

Of course, if creepy friends were enough to scare her off, Penny would have stopped going over to 4A months ago.

When her door is finally open, Penny thanks Choji, takes her groceries, and watches him disappear up the next flight of stairs.

 

 

 

Penny opens her door to a knock and finds a dark-haired, dark-eyed guy on her doorstep. His corpse-like pallor is actually pretty alarming. Penny’s first thought is, _Vampire!_

(She blames Sheldon for that.)

Her second thought is, _Junkie!_

(And she knows that one is her brother’s fault.)

Penny starts groping for the baseball bat that she keeps behind her front door.

“I am Sai of 5A.”

“I’m Penny of 4B,” she replies, mimicking him. Cocking her hip to one side, she adds, “What can I help you with, sweetie?”

Her hand closes around the smooth, narrow neck of a thirty-three inch length of wood.

“I need a model for my art class,” he announces, holding up a sketch pad like it’s a token of proof.

Penny stares at him for a beat, nonplussed, before saying, “Don’t you know anyone else?”

Normally, Penny would be flattered by that sort of request. That was how she had ended up going out with Stewart from the comic book store. A nice sketch of her, a couple of dates, and some friendly conversation had gotten Stewart from the comic book store all the way to second base with her. But, as Sai says, he is of the fifth floor and maybe it’s just his fifth floor vibe but Sai is kind of unsettling.

“No. Yamanaka has work, and Ugly is… Ugly.”

Penny slams the door in his face.

Who the hell does he think he is, calling some poor girl ugly? (And why do guys think that she’ll like them better if they put some other girl down?)

He knocks again.

Penny turns the bolt and puts the chain on for good measure.

“I’ll pay you,” he says through the door, his voice muffled, and Penny sighs because that is her kryptonite. (And how lame is it that she can actually make that reference now?)

“How much?” she asks, leaning her forehead against the door.

He names an overly generous hourly rate and Penny calls back, “No naked stuff!”

“Agreed.”

“And no murdering me!”

“Of course not,” he says placidly, like that’s a request that he hears often.

 _Cree-py,_ carols through the back of her head but Penny is broke enough to take a chance on unlocking and opening her front door to a strange and potentially dangerous man from the fifth floor. On the other side of the coin, Penny’s got a couple of baseball bats stashed around her place from her brief stint working behind the counter at a batting cage and absolutely no compunctions about using them. So it’s pretty fair to say that they’re both making a mistake here.

“Do I have to change clothes?”

His eyes sweep over her from top to bottom before his gaze returns to her face. It is the most clinical evaluation that Penny has ever gotten. She actually finds it incredibly reassuring.

“Wear something light blue or raspberry colored.”

Penny reluctantly shows the guy to her closet, which he goes through with the same clinical detachment, and then takes his selection into the bathroom to change. And yeah, he’s right. She does look pretty fantastic in it. Penny does her makeup and emerges, expecting to be told how to sit or posed like a Barbie or something.

Instead, he stares at Penny impatiently until she goes to perch on one of the stools at her kitchen counter. The couch and chair in the living room just seem too comfortable for this.

He starts sketching and that’s it. Penny doesn’t have to talk or entertain him (although she tries at the very beginning.)

Four modeling sessions later, Penny finally gets a chance to go through Sai’s sketchbook. He’s in her bathroom and the book is just laying there, all open and unguarded. It’s practically begging to be flipped through.

There are all the expected pictures of her (and she looks pretty good in them, even if her face is kind of blank) and several of various pieces of machinery but the bulk of his sketches seemed to be of the pink-haired girl. There are sketches of her shouting, every line of her furious, and several of her lounging on a couch. There are detailed drawings of her laughing, a ton of sketches of her reading or studying something, and a breathtaking colored one of her looking to one side, her expression distant. Compared to those sketches, the ones of Penny are doodles of an ugly robot.

Sai has a major crush on this girl.

“Who’s she?” Penny asks when Sai comes back, his footsteps silent. Penny is nosy and doesn’t really care if he knows that she’s poking through his things.

Glancing over Penny’s shoulder, Sai says, “That is Sakura.”

Thinking back to his original explanation for wanting to draw her, Penny asks, “The one you call Ugly?”

“Yes.”

Guys are so, so stupid.

“Negative compliments don’t work,” Penny says bluntly. “That website is wrong.”

“What website?” he asks, taking his sketchbook back from Penny, whose last glimpse of his work is of the pink-haired girl from upstairs, Sakura, frowning at something that she is reading and chewing on a pencil. “What are you talking about?”

“Does she know that you have a crush on her?”

Sai stares at her.

Penny tries again. “Do you know that you have a crush on her?”

By Penny’s estimation, the sketchbook is at least eighty percent sketches of Sakura. It would be pretty hard to miss but Sai doesn’t strike her as someone who notices the details, just look at the sketches of her as an expressionless robot.

Sai continues staring.

Penny sighs. “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?”

“No,” he says, without bothering to elaborate on whether this is a language thing or a denial thing. He flips his book open to a clean page. “Stop talking. It makes your face muscles move too much.”

 _Hopeless,_ she thinks. _This guy is absolutely hopeless._

Weirdly, _that_ is what gets Penny to warm up to Sai of 5A.

 

 

 

Sheldon is the one who tells Penny about the boys’ expedition to the Magnetic North Pole and the one who asks to practice science-y stuff in the Cheese Cake Factory’s freezer so, after speaking to her supervisor, Sheldon is the one that Penny goes to with the boys’ freezer-date.

She knocks on the door to 4A and lets herself in, walking in on a conversation between two of the fifth floor’s residents and Sheldon. One is that Shikamaru guy that she met in the lobby and the other is Sai’s Sakura.

Penny gives Sakura a quick once over and decides that yeah, she’s pretty. She’d be stunning with the right clothes and makeup, but there’s no way that she will ever be as beautiful as she is through Sai’s eyes.

Penny wants someone to look at her like that.

It’s small and stupid and petty of her but Penny detests Sakura.

Jealousy is an ugly, ugly thing.

Penny decides to chalk her loathing up to Sakura’s involvement in the stiletto incident. Frankly, she’s surprised that Sheldon isn’t holding that against Sakura.

But there Sheldon is, sitting in his usual spot on the couch with Sakura and Shikamaru standing across from him, listening intently as Sakura lists all the reasons that he should take Shikamaru along on the boys’ trip to the Magnetic North Pole. Her speech is thoughtful and persuasive and by the end of it Penny is totally convinced that Shikamaru is the student assistant for Sheldon.

Plus, with one less person upstairs, maybe Sai could actually talk to his crush; maybe ask her out on a date or something. Not that that should be part of Sheldon’s selection criteria or anything. It’s just a thought.

Shikamaru’s rebuttal is much shorter.

“Sakura knows everything that I know, can do all the same calculations that I can, is less lazy than I am, _and_ she’s a trained medical professional, which I’m not.”

Sakura shoots Shikamaru a furious glare, her _‘how could you?’_ practically ringing through the room.

 _‘Survival of the fittest’_ says Shikamaru’s smug grin.

“Really?” asks Sheldon, missing the byplay entirely. It’s not surprising. He still can’t reliably identify sarcasm. Body language is well beyond Sheldon’s understanding, regardless of his insistence that, through his understanding of physics, he has a working knowledge of the universe and everything in it. “Is that true, Miss Haruno?”

“Yes,” Sakura reluctantly grits out and, irrational hatred or no, Penny immediately feels bad for her. Penny remembers Sheldon’s behavior when he had constant access to a doctor during Leonard’s short-lived romance with Dr. Stephanie.

“And you didn’t want to mention it because you’re embarrassed to have had a trade before dedicating yourself to the study of physics,” Sheldon decides. “In this situation, however, your previous experience may prove invaluable when we’re several hours by dogsled from adequate medical facilities.”

“Wait!” Penny blurts, her voice too loud. When three pairs of eyes swing her way, Penny lowers her voice to a more normal pitch to add, “What about Raj? You know that he can’t talk in front of women, Sheldon.”

Sakura shoots Penny a quick, grateful look and half a smile and for a moment it feels like her and Penny against the boys.

“Hmmm, yes, I had considered that, but when I weighed his discomfort at her presence against the comfort that I would take in having someone with even a modicum of first aid knowledge on the expedition, my peace of mind proved far more valuable to me than Raj’s. Congratulations, Miss Haruno, you’re going to the North Pole.”

Well, Penny can’t argue with that. If she was going to the North Pole, she’d want a doctor or EMT or whatever Sakura was along on the trip too. Team Girl loses, zero to one.

Apparently recognizing their defeat when she sees it, Sakura bares her teeth in a bright smile and grits, “Thank you, sir. I look forward to it.”

“Oh yes,” Sheldon coos, the ‘sir’ already going to his head “this is going to work out nicely.”

It’s going to be a _long_ three months. Penny envies no one going on the Antarctic expedition.

 

 

 

The art college at the university is having an art show. As his final project grade, Sai is supposed to show some of his work.

“Which ones are you going to show?” Penny asks, ignoring Sai’s frown when she moves her lips.

“The ones of you, obviously,” Sai replies without looking up from his canvas.

For that particular session, Sai had demanded that she join him in the art college’s third floor atelier because he could not paint at home. Penny had refused to let him paint in her apartment. (She is still holding onto the hope of getting her deposit back.) And Sai said that he could not paint in his own. His roommates were too stupid.

Penny, used to giving in to the demands of the socially weird, not only went with Sai but gave him a ride to the university in her car. It had been refreshing to give a ride to (a weird) someone and _not_ have them obsess over her speed, driving route, or the ever-present red check engine light.

“Maybe you should show some of the Sakura ones.”

“What?” Sai asks, actually looking up from his work. “Why?”

“Because they’re better.”

“They aren’t,” he disagrees, returning his attention to his canvas. “I worked longer and harder on yours. They’re more accurate.”

“The Sakura ones have actual emotion in them,” Penny retorts. “The ones of me are empty.”

Sai looked at her again, his dark eyes like pools of ink. Unnerved by his stare, she adds, “Can’t you clean them up or something?”

Penny is pretty sure that that is a thing that artists sometimes do. She had seen it on television.

Thinking of Sai’s work, Penny remembers that one of Sakura, colored in and looking away, and suggests, “At least think about including the colored one of her. That one’s your best.”

Nodding, Sai returns his attention to his work. “I will. Thank you.”

For Sai’s peace of mind, Penny tries to shut up and hold still after that.

 

 

 

A week later, someone knocks on Penny’s apartment door. It’s not a modeling day with Sai, it’s too early for dinner, and the guys aren’t home anyway. Bemused, Penny answers her door to find Choji and Shikamaru standing there.

“These are yours,” Choji says while holding a trio of neatly stacked packages out to Penny.

Penny had seen the packages earlier when she had checked her mailbox on her way in from work but, since she had not been expecting anything, had not bothered to read the name tags on them.

“Thanks,” says Penny as she takes the boxes.

Choji smiles and nods, Shikamaru shrugs, and as one they turn away and head towards the stairs, saving Penny the trouble of trying to figure out what to say next. She closes the door, locks it because there are a lot of weirdos living in the building now, and takes the packages over to her couch.

Penny rips into them to discover a sleeved blanket, apparently called a ‘Snuggie’, a headset and microphone, and a tiny bottle of pepper spray, sized down to be snapped onto a keyring.

“I have _got_ to stop online shopping when I’m drunk,” Penny mutters but she doesn’t really mean it. Drunk shopping is like surprising yourself or, apparently, people that you did not realize that you were worried about.

Penny dithers over the pepper spray until nearly dinner time then, when the scents of melted cheese and cooked meat begin wafting under her apartment’s front door, stuffs the keyring-size pepper spray bottle into the cardboard box that her foundation had come in. Penny writes ‘If they get out of line’ on a sheet of printer paper, adds the phone numbers for the boys’ various mothers underneath, and folds her note up. Penny doesn’t know if cell phones can get service at the North Pole but she figures that the threat of those numbers will be more than enough. The list of parental contacts goes into the little cardboard box too, which she wraps in leftover Christmas paper.

The box looks a little weird to her, like maybe she’s lame or she cares or something, so Penny finds a black permanent marker and writes, “In Case of Flirting” on one side of her present.

Penny arrives for dinner with the boys in time to hear the tail end of Raj’s complaint about having to live with a pretty woman for three months.

“Not me,” Howard says brightly. “This’ll give me plenty of time to wear her down. Boys, I’m leaving a single man and going to come back a –”

“A man?” teases Leonard.

“A man in a highly sexual relationship with a shiksa goddess,” Howard corrects with a leer. If nothing else, Howard Wolowicz has always had confidence.

Over pizza that night, Penny borrows a thumb drive off of Sheldon, who complains vociferously but loans it to her anyway. She spends the next few days fiddling with her laptop and new electronics, trying to figure out how to make a semi-decent recording.

A few days before Sheldon and Leonard are supposed to leave Penny gives the Snuggie to Leonard and then hugs him. Looking confused, he hugs her back (and then later accuses her of hugging him for way too long and asks her what it means. Why does he have to over-think everything and make it all weird and difficult?)

On Saturday, which is the last time that they will do laundry together before Sheldon’s group leaves, Penny asks Sheldon why he even needs graduate students on his little expedition.

“I thought you hated graduate students,” Penny adds.

“I do,” Sheldon admits, frowning. Behind him, the old washing machines are gently shaking with the force of their wash cycle. “But they aren’t graduates. They’re undergraduates. But graduates or undergraduates, I don’t need either of them for my work. The chair of the physics department insisted that I take one with me.”

“Insisted?” Penny asks, surprised. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Sheldon replies, sounding irritable. “He waited until I was on my way to the men’s room and then waylaid me with his list of prospective assistants. I only agreed because I was in a hurry. It’s a good thing that there were only two names on it. The interview process was _exhausting._ And it took valuable time away from my own preparations for our imminent departure.”

Not knowing what to say to that, Penny nods and tries to look like she knows what he is talking about. Packing for the arctic is probably pretty labor intensive but Sheldon has a tendency to obsess over minutia.

“Was the science committee thingy mad at you for adding another person?”

“No. Fortunately, I had yet to submit my finalized personnel list so I added her before I turned it in.”

“That was lucky for you,” Penny agrees, her hand going into the front pocket of her jeans. Her fingers curl around the thumb drive that she had borrowed from Sheldon.

“Hey, I made you a going away gift,” Penny says as she fishes the drive out of her pocket. “Because homesick is a kind of sick.”

“Oh,” says Sheldon, looking surprised. His eyes are very wide and very blue. After a moment, his long fingers close over hers. “Thank you. I didn’t get you anything of commensurate value.”

“A hug would do,” Penny says, smiling.

“Very well,” says Sheldon, looking mightily put upon. “But don’t expect me to start making a habit of this.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Sheldon reaches for her in fits and starts before finally circling Penny’s shoulders with his arms. This hug is every bit as tight as the one that he had given her at Christmas. Her shoulder pressed against his chest, Penny can feel Sheldon’s heart racing.

She wraps her arms around his waist.

“Thank you Penny.”

“You’re welcome, sweetie.”

If Leonard had thought that their hug was suspiciously long, he has clearly not witnessed enough of Sheldon’s hugs. Eventually, Penny pats Sheldon’s side.

“Okay, that’s long enough, Sheldon.”

“Oh, good,” he said, his arms dropping from her shoulders. Sheldon takes a step back and says, “Penny, do you know who first started cultivating jasmine scents?”

Penny, who is wearing jasmine-scented body spray, has a terrible feeling that she knows what’s going to happen next. Nevertheless she says, “No. Who?”

Sheldon spends the rest of their time together explaining how jasmine-scented body spray came to be.

 

 

 

The night before everyone is set to leave, Penny grabs her last gift and goes across the hallway to say goodbye to the guys.

Penny hugs Leonard and finagles a handshake out of Sheldon after washing her hands under his critical eye. When she leaves 4A, Penny goes upstairs rather than across the hall to her own apartment. Anyone trapped in a small space with Howard Wolowicz for a long time will probably need a little pepper spray to even the odds.

On the fifth floor, Penny hesitates for a moment, uncertain which apartment Sakura lives in, before knocking on 5B.

To Penny’s relief, Choji answers the door.

“Hello, Penny!”

“Hi, Choji. Does Sakura live here?”

“Yes.” Opening the door wider, he takes a couple of steps back and adds “come in.”

“No, thanks,” Penny replies “I just wanted to drop something off.”

Choji frowns but half turns away from Penny to call something over his shoulder in not-English. A moment later, Sakura comes down the hallway that leads to the bedrooms in the guys’ apartment. She threads her way through the controlled chaos in her living room and makes her way to the door.

“Here,” says Penny, holding out the anti-Wolowicz kit. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to get it through customs or security or whatever, but I think that anyone who’s going to spend three months living with those guys might need this.”

Her fingers closing around the little box, Sakura says, “Thank you, Penny.”

“You’re welcome! Good luck!”

With a wave and a smile, Penny exits the fifth floor as quickly as possible.

It’s just so creepy up there!

 

 

 

Penny expects to spend the summer moping and missing the guys (mostly Leonard), but, to her surprise, she doesn’t miss them as much as she could.

The day after they leave, Sai shows up on her doorstep and, his pale face blank, asks if she would like to see his exhibit.

“Sure,” says Penny, cocking her hip. She is already dressed in her Cheesecake Factory uniform. “I’ve got work until eleven-thirty tonight but I’ve got tomorrow afternoon off. Can we go then?”

Technically, she has the whole next day off but Penny likes to sleep in when she can. Four years after escaping the family farm, sleeping in is still a guilty pleasure of hers.

Sai nods, they decide on a time, and, without another word, he leaves. Penny watches him disappear down the stairs then closes the door and finishes getting ready.

Her shift is busy but not as stressful as usual, probably because the guys aren’t there to behave inappropriately or cause trouble with her manager. Penny is an okay waitress at best but she is cute, cheerful, and less stressed than usual so her tips are more generous than usual.

After her shift ends, Penny drives home, takes a long, hot shower, and collapses into bed. If she dreams, Penny does not remember it in the morning.

At noon, there is a knock on her door.

“Coming!” Penny calls, slipping on her shoes. She grabs her purse and keys on her way to the door.

Sai is standing on the other side of it.

“I’m ready!” Penny announces as she steps outside, joining him. She locks up and drives them to the university. Sai leads her to a long, low building, which seems to be some sort of student art gallery.

Inside, every inch of wall above waist height has been covered with student artwork and little cardboard plaques listing the artists and, sometimes, the titles of the pieces. There are pedestals with sculptures, pasted together found art, and what looks like an explosion made out of splintered pencils.

Sai leads Sakura to a bit of wall and then stands at her side, practically hovering.

There are six pieces in his area: three of Sakura and three of Penny. The piece that Penny suggested that he include was there, as was the sketch of Sakura shouting and a painting of Sakura sleeping, in which only Sakura was rendered in color. The one of Sakura sleeping is new.

“They’re all really beautiful, Sai,” Penny says, meaning it. “The Sakura ones are still your best works.”

She still looks like a mannequin in her pieces. Penny is trying really hard not to read too much into that or start worrying over whether or not her face is expressive enough. But it’s hard, especially since the people next to them are analyzing Sai’s work in terms of the exquisite inner life of the one subject contrasted against the bleak emptiness of the other.

Guess who gets to be the delicate beauty and who has to be the soulless husk.

Penny is trying really, really hard not to develop a complex.

A week after her afternoon with Sai – a week in which Penny discovers two things: she misses having a laundry buddy (even if he insists that Saturday nights is laundry night), free dinners, people to eat those dinners with, being showered with random information, and the boys’ enthusiasm. She also discovers that she _doesn’t_ miss Howard’s incessant comments about her tits and ass, Raj’s terrified glances, Leonard’s passive aggression, or Sheldon’s many, many quirks. – Choji shows up to invite Penny out to a movie.

“Sure!” Penny says, because Choji is nice (even if he lives on the fifth floor) and she loves people. Living alone is a must but being alone makes her feel lonely.

Choji lets Penny pick the movie (and Penny takes advantage to drag him to a rom-com), they each buy their own tickets and snacks, and she tries not to notice when he sniffles a bit at the climax of the movie. She passes him a couple of tissues from her purse, though.

A few days after that, the fifth floor pirate casually mentions that she looks nice, adding, “I like what you’ve done with your hair.”

Since Penny has just gotten back from jogging (and eating a bear claw), is disgustingly sweaty, and has been caught wearing a free t-shirt over a pair of yoga pants, she has doubts about the ‘looks nice’ thing. The fact that she hasn’t washed her hair in almost a week (and it looks it), did not brush her hair that morning, and needs to touch up her roots, makes Penny think that the pirate might be blind in his uncovered eye, a terrible liar, or both.

“Thanks,” she says, rather than mentioning any of her suspicions, and is rewarded by what might be a smile, a wink, or possibly a blink. After whatever happens to his face finishes happening, the pirate nods and strolls away, looking terribly pleased with himself.

 _At least he’s not trying that stupid negative compliments thing,_ Penny thinks as she goes upstairs for a shower.

On Saturday, Penny does laundry ( _because Saturday night is always laundry night,_ says a voice at the back of her head that sounds suspiciously like Sheldon’s) because she is in danger of running out of clothes (and has truthfully been out of everything except underwear for two days.)

Leslie Winkle stops by the Cheesecake Factory for lunch one day and says, “Listen, I’ve been having this weird, recurring thought that we should hang out more. I’m not sure where my subconscious is going with this but I’m willing to roll with it. Do you paintball?”

“I only shoot at things that I’m going to kill and eat or girls who are having sex with my boyfriend,” Penny deadpans (but totally means it.)

Leslie nods, her dark hair gleaming under the overhead lights, and says, “Understandable. How about doing the new Star Trek movie instead?”

“Okay.”

And that is how Penny ends up going to the new Star Trek movie twice, once with her own friends (who she hasn’t seen much of since she started hanging out with the physicists in 4A) and once with Leslie Winkle, Sheldon’s arch-nemesis. It’s actually fun, but for completely different reasons, which is how Penny ends up inviting Leslie to a party that she knows about.

Leslie turns out to be an awesome (and slightly terrifying) wing man.

A few days later, Penny has a bit of extra money so she buys a pizza and a bottle of pop after work. Face with eight slices of the meat lovers and two liters of coke, Penny heads upstairs to 5A.

It sounds like someone or possibly two someones are being murdered in there.

Penny knocks anyway.

The fake pirate answers the door, looking harried and with his scarf firmly in place. He opens the door only a sliver, blocking the space with his body so that Penny cannot see past him into the apartment.

“Is Sai home?”

When something in the apartment crashes into something else so hard that it makes the floor reverberate, the pirate winces.

“Yes. Hold on.”

He shuts the door. There are a couple more crashes, the floor shakes like the fifth floor is experiencing a localized earthquake, and then the door swings open again on Sai’s smiling face. Behind him, Penny can see a perfectly neat, perfectly pristine apartment with perfectly matched furniture.

It seems… weird. And really, really unlikely.

“Hello, Penny,” says Sai, pulling Penny’s attention back to him.

“Are you hungry? I’ve got pizza.”

“Are you inviting me to share a meal with you as friends sometimes do?”

“Yes. This is not a date. It’s strictly a friends thing.”

Ever since Penny discovered that she had gone on a date with Leonard without knowing it, she has gotten pretty good about clarifying these things upfront.

Sai nods. “Okay.”

“I like pizza,” interrupts a voice. A hand darts past Sai’s shoulder, pulling the door wider so that the pirate can beam at Penny. He does that eye scrunch that could be part of a smile, a wink, or a blink.

Penny isn’t fooled.

She is a _master_ at mooching off of the unsuspecting. Being a hot girl definitely has its perks.

“This is an invitation between friends,” Penny immediately shoots back at the pirate.

“We could become friends.”

“And when that happens, I’ll invite you to share a meal as friends sometimes do,” Penny retorts, deliberately using Sai’s awkward phrasing in her answer.

Sai smiles at her. (It’s actually more terrifying than Sheldon’s smile.)

The next night, Leslie invites Penny to join her string quartet, which Penny has to decline. Thanks to a former boyfriend, she can play maybe three chords on a guitar and that’s it. They end up making a date to go rock climbing instead.

Rock climbing might be fun except they’re doing it with Barry Kripke, who still insists on calling her ‘Woxanne’, because he thinks that it’s sexier than Penny’s actual name. Kripe spends the entire time staring up at Penny’s ass and making comments like, “Must be jelly because jam don’t shake like that.”

Telling him that he’s disgusting doesn’t shut him up.

Neither does pushing him off of the climbing tower.

If anything, he seems to think that they’re flirting.

 _Just like Howard,_ Penny thinks, even though comparing the men is like comparing chalk and cheese. Howard may openly objectify her (and every other woman that he lays eyes on), but at least he uses her name while doing it. Kripke isn’t even capable of that.

Penny wonders if punching Barry in the face will improve his attitude. It worked wonders on Howard.

Penny mulls that over while she showers and changes in the ladies’ locker room. In the next shower stall over, Leslie seems to be practicing a lecture on loop quantum gravity.

Penny doesn’t know shit about physics except what she’s picked up from the guys but it sounds like Leslie is at least as smart as Sheldon Cooper. And, unlike when the physicists in 4A try to talk science at her, Penny can sort of understand Leslie Winkle’s lecture to her imaginary class. Honestly, it’s a relief to finally understand a little of what the boys are constantly babbling on about.

Penny’s summer without the physicists from 4A quickly fills its self with dinners, dancing, and dates. She has fun (and sometimes sex) with hot, stupid guys from the gym, safe in the knowledge that no one in 4A is listening for her or watching them through the peep hole. There are midnight karaoke in Chinatown with her girlfriends, watching movies in movie theaters that lack slurpee machines, going to Disneyland and the beach, and Fourth of July fireworks to enjoy. And, okay, she does continue to do her laundry on Saturdays, because some routines are harder to break than others. (Or maybe Penny just doesn’t want to break them.)

When the guys had left, Penny had expected their absence to make her heart grow fonder. She had expected the time and distance apart to allow her to change her ambivalence towards a romantic relationship with Leonard into love or at least rekindle her hard won attraction to him. And, in some ways, Penny has gotten everything that she had wanted.

Penny _has_ missed the guys, even as she sees all of the ways in which she is better off without them.

And, while she is still uncertain what to do with Leonard’s (huge, painfully obvious, and enormously flattering) crush, Penny suspects that if she was genuinely interested in a romantic relationship with Leonard, she probably would have had fewer dates and less sex with other people while he was away.

But best of all, the guys’ long absence has allowed Penny to reclaim with her life. She has re-connected with old friends, made new ones, and had a lot of fun, geeky and otherwise. It has been Penny’s best summer in years.

It is probably unfair of her but, knowing that they have to be back in time to torture unsuspecting students in the fall, Penny cannot help but view the boys’ return as heralding the end of summer.

When Leonard shows up on her doorstep, hairy, smelly, and tired from his adventure, he brings with him a gift. In the deluge of science, Penny is pretty sure that he tells her that it is a snowflake from the North Pole, caught especially for her and preserved forever.

“Thank you, Leonard!” Penny exclaims, moving to hug him. “This is the sweetest gift that anyone has ever given me!”

And okay, she _does_ hug Leonard for too long, but she’s missed him and the snowflake is really that wonderful. When Leonard tries to kiss her, Penny turns her face so that his lips brush her cheek.

She may have missed him but the long separation has clarified and ossified their relationship in her mind. Leonard Hofsteader will never be more than her very dear friend.

When she pulls away, Leonard looks disappointed and frustrated in near equal measure.

The long lost Sakura from 5B races up the stairs then and Leonard takes a step back from Penny. Sakura pauses long enough to say, “Thanks,” turn Penny’s hand palm up, and press something into Penny’s hand before she continues on up the stairs to the fifth floor.

Penny opens her hand to find a bottle of screaming red nail polish. It is her preferred brand of polish and her exact favorite shade of red.

That Sakura should know those sorts of tiny, intimate details about her, especially after being gone for so long, should really freak Penny out more than it does. She blames the summer of fun for her relaxed attitude and, since no one can read minds, Raj or maybe Howard for telling Sakura about her personal habits.

“We were about three blocks from the apartment building when she made the cab driver stop at a beauty shop for that,” Leonard says, looking down at the polish in Penny’s hand. “It’s kind of bright.”

“Yeah,” says Penny, her fingers closing around the small bottle. “It is.”

When the other guys come up the stairs, she hugs Raj and Howard in turn, easily fending off Howard’s attempts to grope her, despite having a snowflake from the North Pole in one hand and a bottle of nail polish in the other. Practice makes perfect. Then, because she’s so happy that she could burst, Penny throws caution to the wind and hugs Sheldon.

“Penny!” Sheldon exclaims, his arms up, his elbows splayed out, and his cell phone still pressed to his ear. “What are you _doing?”_ Into the cell phone he says, his tone thoroughly annoyed, _“No,_ Mom, she’s _hugging me!”_

“I missed you, you big whackadoodle,” Penny says, her voice muffled by his shirt. She gives him one last squeeze before she pulls back. “I have the new Star Trek movie, if you want to watch it.”

Sheldon’s entire face lights up. “Blueray?”

“Of course.”

Penny has already sat through most of Sheldon’s blueray lecture. She knows his many reasons for preferring it.

“I’m going to have to call you back, mom,” Sheldon says, directing his next words into his cell phone. “Penny got me the new Star Trek movie in recompense for her preplanned unauthorized hug. Yes, of course, Mom. No, she is not my girlfriend. Penny is a girl who is a friend. No. Yes. But _Mooom…_ Well, if you insist. Goodbye, Mom.”

Penny grinned. “Does having Star Trek ready and waiting for you make up for the hugging?”

“It depends on the quality of the movie,” Sheldon says as he slips his cell phone into his pocket.

“You’re gonna like it!” Penny predicts cheerfully. “I’ll go get it, and be over in ten minutes. You guys go get settled in.”

Sheldon isn’t the only one that she got little welcome back gifts for but, if Christmas is anything to go by, he is the one who will appreciate her gift the most, despite all his many complaints about the pressures of gift giving.

“Okay,” Sheldon says as Leonard moves to unlock their apartment door. He hesitates for a minute before asking, “Would you prefer pizza or Thai?”

“Pizza,” Penny says, thinking of Sai.

“On it!” calls Howard.

“Thanks!” Penny called back.

“Penny,” Sheldon interrupts, giving her a deeply aggrieved look “when you say that you’re going to go get my movie, in what timeframe do you think that that might actually happen?”

“I still have ten minutes!”

“Eight minutes and fifty-two seconds,” he corrects.

“That’s plenty of time,” Penny replies, still smiling, although she’s already heading back to her apartment to get the guys’ welcome home goodies.

Penny is glad that the scientists across the hall are back, even if it _does_ mean the end of the summer of friendship and fun. After all, nothing lasts forever.

  



End file.
